"I was afraid you would not easily have loosened your affections from the Belles Lettres. A Delicate Taste and warm imagination like yours must find it hard to give up such refined & exquisite enjoyments for the coarse and dry study of the Law. It is like leaving a pleasant flourishing field for a barren desert; perhaps I should not say barren either because the Law does bear fruit but it is sour fruit that must be gathered and pressed and distilled before it can bring pleasure or profit.... I myself use to have too great a hankering after those amusing studies. Poetry wit and Criticism Romances Plays &c captivated me much: but I begin to discover that they deserve but a moderate portion of a _mortal's_ Time and that something more substantial more durable more profitable befits our riper age. It would be exceeding improper for a labouring man to have nothing but flowers in his Garden or to determine to eat nothing but sweet-meats and confections. Equally absurd would it be for a Scholar and man of Business to make up his whole Library with Books of Fancy and feed his mind with nothing but such Luscious performances."[15] The first half of Freneau's life, as we have seen, was one of disillusion. It took twenty-five years to kill the spark in his breast, but the process though slow was sure. After the fierce period of the _National Gazette_ he thought of himself only as a worker in the tide of practical affairs, a champion of the rights of man, a protestor against tyranny and wrong, and his muse had become a mere drudge, aiding by satire and song what he now conceived to be his life work. He had taken a deliberate though sorrowful leave of his early muse in 1787, one year after the appearance of his first volume of poems: "On these bleak climes by fortune thrown Where rigid Reason reigns alone, Where flowery Fancy holds no sway Nor golden forms around her play, Nor Nature takes her magic hue, Alas what has the muse to do! An age employed in painting steel Can no poetic raptures feel; No fabled Love's enchanting power No tale of Flora's shady bower. Nor wood-land haunt, or murmuring grove Can its prosaic bosom move. The muse of love in no request, I'll try my fortune with the rest; Which of the nine shall I engage To suit the humor of the age? On one, alas, my choice must fall, The least engaging of them all! Her visage stern, severe her style, A clouded brow, a cruel smile, A mind on murdered victims placed, She, only she, can please the taste."